as hard as a bone, but
when once mastered its flavour was admirable. Christian persuaded me to
taste the wine, of which he had a high opinion, and he was electrified
by the universal shudder the one taste caused. The grapes from which it
was brewed had been grown in a gooseberry garden, and all the saccharine
matter carefully extracted; the wine had been left without a cork since
the first dawn of its existence, and the heat and jolting of its travels
on Christian's back had reduced it to the condition of warm flat
vinegar. He drank it with the utmost relish, and was evidently
reconciled to my verdict by the consideration that there would be all
the more for him.

From the appearance of the bread and cheese when the meal had come to an
end, I concluded that my companion had changed his mind in the course of
feeding, and had resolved to compress the whole eating of the day into
one large refreshment here. The consumptive powers of the Swiss-German
peasant, when his meal is franked, has not unfrequently reminded me of
the miraculous eating performed by a yellow domino of that nation, at
the fete by which Louis XIV. celebrated the second marriage of the
Dauphin. This domino was of large size, and ate and drank voraciously
throughout the entertainment, which lasted many hours, retiring every
five minutes or so, and returning speedily with unabated appetite. The
thing became at length so portentous, that enquiries were instituted,
and it was found that the trusty _Cent-Suisses_ had joined at a domino,
and were drawing lots all through the evening for the next turn at
eating; so that each man's time was necessarily limited, and he
accordingly made the most of it.

We soon took to the rocks, and found them, as the charcoal-burner had
promised, sufficiently stiff work. Colonel (now General) Dufour visited
the Schafloch with a party of officers in 1822, and he describes[57] the
path as a dangerous one, so much so that several of the gallant members
of his party could not reach the cave: he uses rather large words about
the precipices, and it is a matter of observation that military service
on the Continent tends to induce a habit of body which is not the most
suitable for doubtful climbing. The mountain seemed to be composed, in
this part, of horizontal layers of crumbling shale, with a layer now and
then of stone, about the thickness of an ordinary house-tile. The stone
layers project from the looser masonry, and afford an exc